


He Who Made Kittens Put Snakes In The Grass

by SegaBarrett



Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Captivity, Future Fic, Gen, Rescue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 08:44:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16014398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: A grown-up Lena discovers that Pope has been kidnapped and looks for unlikely help.





	1. Lena

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Animal Kingdom, and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: Title from "Bungle in the Jungle" by Jethro Tull.

“Can one of the interns please do the filing? I noticed it’s been building up over there in the main mailbox.”

Lena Blackwell-Ogilvy sighed and fiddled with her nametag, drawing the metal piece through the hole and out again. 

She had been in Social Work Internship to two weeks, expecting to save children and change the world, and so far all of what she had been doing had been filing other social worker’s paperwork. 

This didn’t feel like this was what she had been sent to college to do, but she figured everyone had to start somewhere. It didn’t pay to make a fuss, after all. She had learned that a long time ago.

“Lena? Did you catch all of that?” her supervisor asked. “You look like your head is in the clouds.”

“No,” Lena replied quietly. “I got all that. I’ll get on the filing right away.”

***

She rode the bus back to her off-campus apartment. It was nestled in the back of a series of trees, up a long path. Mrs. Ogilvy had insisted on coming out to make sure that it was safe, that there weren’t too many “weirdos” around. There were definitely weirdos around, but that was part of what Lena liked about it. It wasn’t the white picket fence suburbia that she had moved out of when she turned eighteen.

She put her key in the lock and walked inside, grumbling as she opened her mailbox and found it filled almost entirely with bills and Geico ads. She tossed them on the counter and looked at her cordless phone. Bella had teased her for having a landline the last time she had been out to visit, calling her a dinosaur, but there was something about it that reminded her of home. 

Her first home.

She tried not to think about Cath and Baz much. That was what she called them in her head, to keep it clinical and removed and keep herself from falling too deep into the hole.

There was one message on the answering machine, and it was from Bella, checking in and asking if she wanted to catch a movie later that weekend. Lena vowed to call her back in an hour or so.

She settled into the chair behind her laptop and clicked on the internet, ready to get started on an exciting three hours of homework. 

The news opened up and Lena found herself scrolling though, noticing the latest about Ariana Grande’s upcoming wedding before continuing on to the prediction that it would be thunderstorming for the entire upcoming week. 

She scrolled down a little further.

“Son of Alleged Crime Family Missing, Presumed Kidnapped.”

Lena swallowed and stared ahead. It couldn’t be him. 

Her hand was shaking as she clicked on the headline. Her face flushed and her fingers tapped against the mouse – Bella always made fun of her for still having a mouse attached to her laptop. 

_Andrew Cody, the eldest son of recently deceased alleged crime matriarch Janine Cody, went missing early yesterday when his parole officer failed to locate him at his listed address. Upon a search for of his residence, blood was found. It is considered at this time that Cody has been kidnapped or injured in some manner._

Lena dug her nails into her hands. She couldn’t stop thinking…

***

_“Uncle Pope, why are we running away?”_

_She felt so tired, so much whiplash, just wanted to be in the same place._

_Just wanted to stop losing everyone. Maybe she was bad luck, like a black cat under a ladder with an umbrella._

_Her mother had walked out and never come back._

_Her father was dust at the bottom of the ocean._

_Uncle Pope looked like he wanted to cry every time he looked at her._

_Maybe she deserved to just travel from place to place forever. Maybe that was what this was._

_“She said we could be sisters.”_

_Too much to hope for. Bad luck, bad luck. She’d been bad and she had cut the pretty girl’s hair and now everyone wanted her gone._

_She had to be strong for both of them._

***

“Uncle Pope,” she said the words out loud. It had been so long. After a while, he had stopped coming by the foster home, and she had assumed that he had gotten busy or it was too painful.

She knew he still cared; she had seen it in his eyes. The last time she had seen him she had been thirteen; hormonal and angsty, first period and liking boys. It had all come spilling out and she had been a little worried she had scared him away.

It was like he had expected her to stay seven for the rest of her life, frozen in time.

But in her mind’s eye he didn’t seem any older, either. 

She sighed. It wasn’t like she could do anything about it, other than hope he came back safely. 

There wasn’t anything she could do.

Right?

***

Lena couldn’t sleep; she kept rolling over and groaning, feeling as if there was something hanging in her lightbulb and coming for her, that closing her eyes would let it in.

It was dumb. She was twenty years old, far too old for that little kid monster-in-the-closet kind of stuff. But she couldn’t shake the feeling.

It was Uncle Pope. He was out there somewhere, kidnapped. Was he afraid? It was weird to think that Uncle Pope was a man who could feel fear; he had always seemed larger than life, as if he held all of the secrets of the world in his hands, or behind his eyes.

Looking back now, maybe that was why he always seemed so sad.

Was anyone coming for him? 

Grandma Smurf would have, but she was gone. Lena had seen it in the paper last year and she had wanted to go to the funeral but, as far as she could see, there had not been one.

She could remember Uncle Deran and Uncle Craig. Where were they now? Were they going to go looking for Uncle Pope?

Lena’s veins felt ice cold.

Maybe she was the only one. Maybe it had to be her to rescue him.


	2. Nicky

Nicky Belmont leaned back in her chair and lit her cigarette. She puffed it, coughing out for a moment and then sucking her breath back in again.  
She was sitting in the middle of a room with hardwood floors and peeling walls, surrounded by a few stacks of boxes. There was a cold front coming in through the cracks in the doors, and she pulled her coat around herself and shivered.

“Mom, put out the cigarette, you don’t want anything catching fire this time.” Her sixteen-year-old daughter, Hallie, was standing in the doorway and observing the scene with a sigh. “And you should go to bed. It’s late.”

“I know it’s late,” Nicky tossed the cigarette on the ground and smothered it with her heel. “But I couldn’t sleep. Fern and Taylor aren’t up, are they?”

Hallie shook her head. 

“No. You know how they sleep.” 

“You’re right,” Nicky murmured. “I’m trying to figure out what the hell we’re going to do for rent this month.”

“We could sell some more stuff,” Hailie suggested, “I think I found some textbooks in the basement that we can sell on Amazon.”

“Sounds good.” Nicky reached her arms up and yawned, before beginning to cough. “Damn cold.”

“You should quit smoking,” her daughter suggested. “Fucks with your immune system.”

“Don’t say fucks,” Nicky told her. “And go to bed.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Hailie said with a yawn, heading back up the stairs.

It was then that Nicky heard the knock at the door. 

“Who the hell could that be? Go to bed, Hailie.” She zipped the robe and shuffled over to the door, opening it. “Who are you?” The girl ahead of her looked to be Latina, with long black hair and black-rimmed glasses, along with a permanently serious looking look across her face. Maybe Nicky had smashed into this girl’s car or something? She couldn’t be bothered to remember, and she wanted her to go. “Whatever you want, I don’t go nothing, so I’ll see you in court, I guess.” She began to try to close the door. 

“You don’t remember me?” 

Nicky stopped in her tracks, her mouth dropping open a little bit. She was older, of course, but her eyes were the same. She had always had such sad eyes. 

“Lena?” 

“Hi, Nicky.”

***

“Listen, Lena, I’m so sorry to hear about Pope but… I don’t know what you expect from me. Ever since J and I broke up, I haven’t really talked to any of the Codys at all. I mean, it’s been thirteen years. I just kind of… moved on. How have you been? I heard you ended up in foster care.”

“You’re trying to change the subject. I need to talk to J.”

“I haven’t seen J in years. He popped a baby in me and then took off.”

“That’s not what I asked. You know where to find him, don’t you?”

Nicky hesitated.

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“I wasn’t that young that I don’t remember that there was a time when trouble was exactly what you wanted, Nicky.” Nicky flinched; Lena’s voice was ice-cold, determined. What had happened to the little girl over the years? And Lena probably wasn’t far off in wondering what the hell had happened to Nicky, either. 

Nicky stuck her hands in her coat and sighed.

“I don’t see J all that often.” All she needed was the kids to overhear something about J and come to some kind of conclusions. “But I do see him sometimes. He still comes around to… see me.”

Lena would be old enough to know what Nicky meant by that. 

“Okay. And where is he? What’s he doing?” Lena took a step forward. “I need to know this, Nicky. This is Pope we’re talking about.” Her voice was frantic, panicked.

“Okay, okay, I’ll give you the address he’s living at. It’s not far.” Nicky picked up a piece of paper and scribbled something down on it, handing it over. “I wouldn’t go there, though. I don’t know what J is involved in these days, and I don’t want to know. But you should be careful. You’re, what, a college girl these days?”

“Yeah,” Lena replied, sounding defensive. “That doesn’t mean that I can’t handle myself.” She gave Nicky a look. “You should…” 

“Get myself together? Stop being a shitshow? Yeah, I’ve been told it all before. You’re not saying anything that my father hasn’t told me a hundred times. On the phone, of course. He won’t let me actually come there anymore.”

“Well, in the meantime, you should help me help Uncle Pope.”

“What do you want with Pope, anyway?” Nicky asked, walking over to a bookcase that contained no books but did contain a pack of cigarettes. She picked up one and lit it. “He was super creepy. You’d be better off without him, kid.”

Lena glared. 

“Don’t you ‘kid’ me, I’m an adult, okay? And I’m not letting Pope die. So you can sit here with your cigarettes acting like you don’t care, and maybe you don’t. Or you can be a decent person and help me.”

Lena raised her fist, and for a moment Nicky thought she was really going to hit her. It wouldn’t have surprised her. She was a Cody, after all, no matter what last name she was sporting these days. 

“All right, all right. I’ll put the kid in charge and I’ll get my shit and let’s go.”

Lena stared at her.

“We are not just leaving your kids alone. You belong on that… what’s it called? Jerry Springer. I’m going to call Bella.”

“Who the hell is Bella?”

“My sister. She’ll watch your kids. And you’re going to help me save Pope.”


End file.
